A few months ago we launched an alpha release of MySQL 5.5. Today we are releasing a more robust version as a public Beta, which includes fixes and enhancements based on customer feedback. You can select MySQL 5.5 from your environment and install the Percona Server v5.5.13. The Percona build is an enhanced drop-in replacement for MySQL that allows you to run queries with greater speed and consistency.

Benefits of Upgrading

MySQL 5.5 delivers significant enhancements that enable you to improve the performance and scalability of your web applications. Some reasons to upgrade are:

Improved multi-core performance: The database and its InnoDB storage engine have been enhanced to provide optimum performance and scalability when running on the latest multi-CPU and multi-core hardware and operating systems.

Improved recovery performance: One of InnoDB’s great strengths is its ability to reliably recover data after any type of crash that affects the database. But, this cleanup and checking makes the next restart longer. InnoDB 1.1 has improved the algorithms for recovery to provide faster uptime after a crash.

Important! MySQL 5.5 on Engine Yard Cloud is a Beta feature. Always test in a development or staging environment before using this feature in production.

Available Upgrade Options

Be sure to review your upgrade options. The database and storage engines are substantially different, and a binary upgrade on the master database is not recommended. As a result, some downtime is unavoidable.

Dump and Restore

Best for: Small to medium data sets

This entails creating a new environment that is running the MySQL 5.5 database version and restoring a dump from the original environment to it. It requires your application to be down (or at least not servicing database requests) for the duration of the dump from the original environment and the restore to the new one. The size of your database matters; the more data you have, the longer it takes to dump and import it on the new database. Instructions on dump and restoring backup files can be found under Scenario 2 in our Database Documentation site.

In-Place Upgrade by Professional Services

Best for: Large data sets

If you know or suspect that the dump/restore upgrade will take too long (from prior testing or from the size of your database), then contact our Professional Services team to inquire about an assisted in-place upgrade of your existing environment(s).

This option will be available starting January 1st, 2012. Our database support team will analyze your database and provide you with an optimal upgrade path based on your application needs. As a baseline, the team will perform an in-place binary upgrade on a database slave (at least one is required) and then promote the newly upgraded slave to master. The team will also alert you if you should be aware of any possible upgrade blockers based on your environment. The in-place upgrade path can potentially minimize application downtime to mere minutes!

We hope you are as excited as we are with this Beta release and stay tuned for more news from the EY Data team. (Hint - you won’t have to wait long!)